A brief history of menstruation
Fangzhou Luo Portland, Oregon, United States Philammon declaring his love for Hypatia. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain. After a few failed attempts to redirect a flirtatious student to “higher pleasures” like music, the Ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician Hypatia resorted to revealing where she was in her menstrual cycle to deter him. The philosopher who recorded […]
Syndrome de Lasthénie de Ferjol
Krishna G. Badami Christchurch, New Zealand Figure 1. ‘Une Histoire sans nom’ by Jules Amedee Barbey d’Aurevilly. Source Several years ago we saw a young woman who had an iron deficiency anemia, caused not by blood loss from menstruation (a common cause of iron deficiency anemia in females), but by repeatedly drawing her own blood by venipuncture and discarding it. […]
Blood is the life
Saameer Pani Sydney, Australia The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist. Giovanni di Paolo. 1455/60. The Art Institute of Chicago. Vampire—the very word itself conjures up images of supernatural creatures who look not unlike you and me, prowl about at night, prey on unsuspecting souls, and sink their fangs into innumerable, hapless victims to […]
Leukemia past and present: lessons learned and future opportunities
Nada Hussein Giza, Egypt John Hughes Bennett. Painting by Henry Wright Kerr. Unknown date. Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation. “The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward,” said Winston Churchill in a meeting at The Royal College of Physicians in 1944. At that […]
Heterozygous Advantage: how one deadly disease prevents another
Neal Krishna Boston, Massachusetts, United States An allegory of malaria. Process print after M. Sand. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Of all the genetic disorders to which man is known to be a victim, there is no other that presents an assemblage of problems and challenges quite comparable to sickle […]
Drawing blood: depictions of transfusion in contemporary arts
Diana-Andreea Novaceanu Bucharest, Romania The history of blood transfusion has unfolded in stages, first from experiments on animals, then from animal to human, and finally to transfusion between humans. The subject, in all its intricacy, has been captured by medical illustrators and painters throughout the centuries. Over the course of the last decades, attitudes […]
Blood policies and bioart in the 1900s
Christopher Hubbard Ohio, United States Image titled The Army Blood Transfusion Service Needs Blood Donors. Image located from the Digital Public Library of America. Rights: unrestricted. Policies related to blood that were adopted in the U.S. during the early to mid-1900s produced cultural and legal effects for certain populations. In 1920, for example, the […]
In the heart of Damascus
Kera Panni Seaside, California, United States Propaganda in support of President Bashar al-Assad between the Citadel of Damascus and the entrance to the suq, (May 2007). Personal archives, photo taken by author Even as a child in the American suburbs, I knew my blood flowed from Syria. Relatives said my Jiddoo’s parents were farmers […]
Karl Landsteiner and the discovery of blood groups
Safia Benaissa Mostganem, Algeria Karl Landsteiner (1868–1943), Austrian pathologist, hematologist and serologist; discoverer of the blood groups. Albert Hilscher. circa 1910. Accessed via Wikimedia Commons Karl Landsteiner was the Austrian scientist who recognized that humans had different blood groups and made it possible for physicians to transfuse blood safely. He entered medical school at […]
What can physicians learn from Benjamin Rush, blood, and the Red Cross?
Ryan Hill Jamestown, Rhode Island, United States Portrait by Charles Willson Peale, Benjamin Rush, circa 1818. Independence National Historical Park. Accessed via Wikimedia Commons. Despite the adamant opposition he encountered from many of his contemporaries, Dr. Benjamin Rush was undeterred; he was certain that bloodletting was the most prudent of all medical procedures and remained […]